TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Antes Muerta Que Lichita' and 'Señora Acero' Premiere Tonight, Plus a Summer Roundup

Antes Muerta Que Lichita premieres September 22 on Univision.
Photo Credit: Televisa

Is the telenovela in decline? There has not been a single hit telenovela in the US this year. Only two years ago, AMORES VERDADEROS averaged 4.5 million viewers a night; this year, only two telenovelas, MI CORAZÓN ES TUYO and HASTA EL FIN DEL MUNDO, have averaged even 3 million viewers and they concluded way back in May. A pair of telenovelas that concluded Monday, AMORES CON TRAMPA and EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS, failed to garner the usual final weeks ratings bump, limping to the finish line. The telenovelas replacing them: an apparent BETTY LA FEA rehash and the second season of maybe the worst narco-novela ever made are hardly propitious.

ANTES MUERTA QUE LICHITA (weeknights at 8 p.m. ET on Univision)
Telenovelas based on original scripts are all but extinct at Televisa. The largest producer of Spanish language telenovelas in the world averages a paltry one original telenovela a year, or about a one to seven ratio of original to remake/adaptation. This depressing reality is aggravated when their newest original telenovela, ANTES MUERTA QUE LICHITA, on the surface, looks so derivative of YO SOY BETTY, LA FEA, the most adapted, remade, and ripped-off telenovela of the past decade: an ugly duckling heroine in a bustling office setting. Even the vibrant colors of the sets shown in the promos for LICHITA recall the Tashlinesque interiors of the ABC version UGLY BETTY.

What ANTES MUERTA QUE LICHITA has in its favor is it is from a clever producer, Rosy Ocampo, all but ensuring LICHITA will be more palatable than the last two comedies Univision has aired in this time slot: the occasionally bearable MI CORAZÓN ES TUYO and the wretched AMORES CON TRAMPA. The worlds Ocampo creates in her comedies are stylized and cartoonish, but the acting is kept reasonably grounded. The vulgarity and mugging that plague Televisa comedies is usually kept in check in Ocampo productions, and she relies far less on dumb sound and visual effects.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Yo No Creo En Los Hombres' Premeires Tonight on Univision

Yo No Creo En Los Hombres premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET on Univision. Despite being another Televisa remake from a story by Caridad Bravo Adams dating from the middle of the last century, Yo No Creo En Los Hombres was the highest acclaimed Mexican telenovela of 2014 by Mexican critics, the winner of seven Premios TvyNovelas, and hailed as a return to form for producer Giselle González and writer Aída Guijardo (Para Volver a Amar, Alma De Hierro) following the misfire comedy Cachito de Cielo in 2012.

From the press materials: “Yo No Creo En Los Hombres is the award-winning tale of women who have lost all hope and trust in men. The pain and low self-esteem caused by members of the opposite sex leads these women to seek vengeance by any means possible. The story centers on a hardworking and beautiful young woman who suffers deeply at the hands of all the important male figures in her life and also at the hands of a malicious family that torments her.